Maddie, Phantom, Phantom, Maddie
by Serenova
Summary: Maddie is studying footage of a Phantom fight and begins to connect the puzzle pieces. A reveal fic.


**Author's Note:** Despite my writing this story, I've actually watched very few episodes of the series. I do have all of it in my Netflix queue, but I haven't gotten around to watching it yet. Along with Eureka, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Farscape, Battlestar Galatctica, etc., …I have a lot of things to watch.

Anywho, I've always been interested in stories where Maddie finds out who/what Danny really is. This is, of course, my own take on it. As I haven't seen 'Phantom Planet', its events don't happen here. Facts may or may not be accurate to series cannon. I've played with things to suit my purposes. It actually all started with the image of Danny floating, in his human form, cross legged, with his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. Couldn't get that one image out of my head and it turned into this.

This story is 3,073 words in length (not including the A/N) and six pages in Word. This is a one-shot with no plans to be expanded upon. Constructive criticism is appreciated, praise is welcomed, and flames are ignored.

Thank you and enjoy.

* * *

Maddie Fenton had been going over some recent recordings of various fights she had been lucky enough to see while out ghost hunting. Granted, most of the time, by the time she had gotten there the ghost boy had already beaten her to engaging with the enemy and was well on beating the crap out of him most of the time as well. She had taken the role of 'passive observer' much better than her husband, Jack Fenton. He had taken a long time to be able to watch a ghost fight without trying to interfere or shoot one of the combatants.

In fact Maddie had had her work cut out for here when she tried to convince Jack not to shoot at Danny Phantom. She had come around after he kept saving her. After all, if someone saves your life… and saves it more than one time, you are much less inclined to think they are the embodiment of all evil. Jack on the other hand… he needed a good lecture on morals and what they believed but eventually he had come around as well.

At this point, the two of them were back to basically just research. They were no longer out fighting ghost themselves unless there was more than one attack at the same time. After all, Phantom couldn't be in two places at the same time.

Maddie was taking notes as she watched one of the recordings on the computer. It was of a fight Phantom had had with a ghost called Technus.

_"My technology is far superior to your pathetic physical attacks,"_ She heard Technus say and she looked up from her writing to see a slightly singed Technus facing of a basically unhurt or bothered Phantom.

She had to smile herself when she saw the sarcastic expression on Phantom's face, _"Oh, like your armor could stop this?"_ and she watched as Phantom charged up an ecto-blast and fired it at Technus like one would when making a fake gun with one's hand. She could even see his mouth make out the words 'pew pew' even if she couldn't hear it over the noise of the blast.

Maddie was brought up short by her own giggles though and paused the recording on an image of Phantom's laughing face as Technus disappeared to the Ghost Zone, so that she could think about what had just occurred to her.

For the most part, Maddie and Jack had assumed that ghosts were obsession driven, partially sentient piles of goo…. But Phantom's personality made her rethink that assumption. Of course they had _plenty_ of evidence that a lot of ghosts _were_ evil, but as for Phantom, he was a conundrum.

Maddie took a clean sheet of paper and began to write out the things that were strange about Phantom.

_1. Appears to have a fully developed __human__ personality_

_2. Refers to himself as being alive at various times_

_3. Appears to have aged over a 3 year study period, ghost shouldn't age, being 'stuck' at the point when they died, also gets more powerful as he 'ages'_

_4. Is not 'evil' like other ghosts_

_5. Protects town and people in it from attacks at any time of day or night_

There were other's she could think of, but those were the four largest reasons Phantom was an odd ghost. In fact there was something stranger about Phantom than that. She stared at his laughing face on the screen as Technus got it, enjoying his sense of humor and even agreeing with it. Then it hit her and Maddie felt like the Earth should have moved beneath her.

_Phantom looked exactly like her Danny!_ The thought struck her dumb. Slowly things began to click into place in her mind. The portal, Danny's accident, the strange things that happened for a month after the accident but seemed to go away, Danny's constant breaking of his curfew, coming home with both minor and not so minor injuries, things that no bully would have done. It just all made sense.

Maddie quickly added all her thoughts to her list, in a new section underneath the stuff about Phantom, before she forgot it all. Looking at the clock she realized that Danny should be home from school soon, at least to drop off his school stuff.

Maddie was extremely glad that Jack was out getting supplies for their various equipment and experiments. Some of it could only be picked up in person, the materials being too dangerous to ship, and it was an all-day drive for some of the chemicals they needed. Jack was also the kind of man who could jump in without thinking and Maddie wanted to take a more cerebral approach than just her husband's initial knee-jerk reaction.

Pouring herself a fresh cup of coffee from the always ready pot, she settled down at the kitchen table to think, look over her list… and to wait for Danny to come home.

Sitting there, staring at the page before her had Maddie thinking even more. An idea struck her and she went and got Phantom's file downstairs before then going and getting the family album from the living room. Spreading out pictures of her son and Phantom she compared pictures from the same time frames over three years. They aged exactly the same and looked exactly the same except for coloring. Madding had to wonder how she had missed it. Then she realized, she did not see it because she did not _want_ to see it. The implications of what her son might be made her blood run cold, and made her instantly afraid that she may have, before their 'truce' with Danny Phantom, killed her own son.

Staring at the photos and the data before her she did not realize almost forty five minutes had passed and was jolted out of her thoughts when the front door slammed.

"I'm home!" She heard Danny call before hearing heavy footsteps head upstairs; she then heard a bedroom door close.

"That's it, I'm going to ask him," She said to herself and gathered all her data up off the table, made a neat pile, and took it with her upstairs.

Removing the hood of her jumpsuit and her goggles, Maddie knocked on her son's door, "Danny," she called, "May I come in?"

She heard a quick shuffling of things before she heard a muffled "Yeah!" Issue from the room. She slowly opened the door and looked inside. Danny was sitting cross-legged at the head of his bed with a textbook open and a notebook.

Maddie watched him closely for a reaction as she sat on the foot of his bed. He had not made his bed that morning and the crumpled up blankets seemed like a wall between them.

"So, what's up mom?" Danny asked. You could hear his nervousness in his voice, though it was obvious he was trying to hide it.

"I was going over some of our recent footage of a fight I captured between Phantom and Technus," Maddie said by way of an introduction.

"Oh?" Danny said, non-committal, and Maddie could see that her son had paled slightly.

"Yes," Maddie said, pretending not to see him paling even more, "I caught myself enjoying Phantom's sense of humor while watching the fight," Here Maddie paused, unsure how to go on…. But since Danny wasn't adding anything, she plowed on, allowing herself to finish her initial thought, "And I found myself noticing things about him. How he seems so human, his sense of humor…" Maddie trailed off again and reached for the stack of papers she's brought with her.

She paused when she saw Danny reach for them himself, "May I?" He asked, more polite than she had heard him in years, when she nodded her ascent he took the stack and started rifling through it.

Danny slowly spread the documents over his bed as he went through them. His homework was hastily closed and shoved onto his nightstand in order to make more room to spread out the sheets. After a few minutes everything was spread out in front of him and he just studied it all with his mother watching.

Suddenly Danny paled even more, getting a worried look in his eyes that didn't go unnoticed by Maddie, "Is this how powerful he really is?" Danny asked pointing to a sheet of power readouts for Phantom's power level. According to the Guys In White Pariah Dark was a 9 on their scale, the most recent readings on Phantom had him at a 9.3 and that fact alone had scared Danny almost witless with shock.

Maddie nodded before saying, "Those are the most recent readings we got last week during a random fight. We've been trying to keep track of his power level as he grows and develops." And again Maddie could hear her son's quiet, but harsh intake of breath.

It struck Danny as odd that his mother had brought this information to him. It made him think that she had figured it out, and with all the data she had, she probably _had_. What was odd for him was talking about himself in the third person, damn that could be confusing. But at the moment he was also starting to get scared, for two very different reasons. The first was obvious, his mother might know his secret, might have figured it out. The second scared him even more… he was now more powerful than the king of all the Ghosts.

Finally Danny found his voice, "So why did you bring all this here?" he asked his mother.

"You read the most recent sheet of notes correct?" Maddie asked, answer his question with one of her own, at Danny's nod she continued, "As I was watching the recording, I noticed how similar the two of you are, same looks, same sense of humor, you've even aged the same, the only difference is the coloring." Maddie sighed here and looked down at her black-gloved hands, trying to find how to tell her son she suspected that he was half dead. Taking a breath she plowed on with her thought, "If you're him," She said, pointing to a recent photo of Phantom, "It explains everything, from your missing of curfew to the injuries to the strange things after your accident with the portal, to the things Phantom seems to know about our family."

Maddie looked up at her son stood and began to pace his room, crossing from his closet door to his desk and back. He paced for quite a few minutes and while Maddie could tell he was muttering under his breath she could not make out anything he was saying. She did however notice what appeared to be green flashes in his eye accompanied by an angry expression on his face. These few things only helped to make her case stronger in her mind.

Finally, Danny stopped pacing and stood at the foot of the bed, "Do you want powers or a full transformation?" he asked bluntly, and to only prove his point more proceeded to lift one leg off the ground and then the other to sit cross-legged in mid air, floating a few feet from the foot of his bed, resting his elbows on his knees, chin resting on his intertwined fingers.

Maddie's mouth dropped open in shock. Her son was floating… and apparently doing it effortlessly. "W-whatever you want honey," She managed to say after figuratively picking her jaw up off the floor. Only to have it drop again as a ring of white light appeared around her son's waist, split in two and traveled up and down his body, slowly changing him into Danny Phantom. He still hovered there in mid-air, the exact same position he stared in, only how he was Phantom, not Fenton. Maddie noticed that he actually glowed a little, even in the afternoon light of his bedroom. Of course she knew that Phantom glowed, but knowing that it was her son and that they were in his room made that single fact more odd than it should have been… either that or she was fighting off shock.

Seeing the question in his mother's eyes Danny sighed and flipped himself onto his back, floating in mid air, "It was the portal," he said without preamble, "When I turned it on I was inside and got caught in the power up. You know that I got zapped, but you didn't realize what had truly happened. Sam, Tuck and I figured it out much later after doing a _ton_ of research into genetics and looking at my DNA." Danny sighed and finally stood on his own two feet again, "Somehow, instead of just getting a little bit in my system that would leave, it bonded to my DNA instead. Dunno why it didn't kill me, maybe it did, after all, but I have ghost powers and I continue to get more."

Danny was standing there rubbing the back of his neck nervously looking worried and apprehensive and Maddie just could not have that, she could tell he was not comfortable as he was, "I-if you're more comfortable human sweetie," she said and winced when she stuttered a little bit. Danny nodded and the rings appeared again, turning back into, what Maddie could now only call his human form. With another sigh Danny flopped on his back in mid air again, and seemed to be as comfortable as he was lying on his bed. Maddie sighed, "I'm going to have to figure a way out to tell you father," she said quietly.

Danny winced, "Yeah, I know," he said.

Maddie put on a brave smile, considering that Jack used to threaten to tear Phantom apart molecule by molecule she wasn't surprised her son was apprehensive. Searching for neutral ground, Maddie asked, "Do you do this often?"

Danny turned his head to look at his mother, still floating on his back, "Do what often?"

"Float," was Maddie's reply.

Half smiling, Danny let out a dry chuckle, "I guess," he said. "I can use all my powers in either form, and floating's comfortable, I'd tell you to try it but you probably don't want to go through what I did to get the ability in the first place."

"Ah," Maddie said in a small voice, trying not to imagine what her son went through, then busied herself collecting some of her research. She paused when she came to the sheet that listed Danny's power level. "Why were you so bothered by your power reading?" She asked, then heaved a mental sigh, it was going to take a bit to get used to her son being half ghost or whatever he was.

She could see Danny pale slightly and bit her lower lip, feeling like she should not have brought it up. Finally Danny spoke up, "Remember the Pariah Dark thing?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," Maddie said slowly, wondering what that had to do with anything.

"You and Dad didn't get any readings on him at the time, but the Guys in White did. And I know you use the same scale…..," Danny trailed off and then spoke again, "Pariah Dark was a 9 on their scale."

Maddie stared at her son in confusion for a moment, "A nine?" she managed to ask, and looked back down on their data on Phantom the number stared back at her, 9.3. Her son was stronger than the Ghost King. "Y-you're serious," She stuttered out and then looked back down at her notes, the numbers staring back at her, only to look up again when she felt Danny hand on her shoulder.

"Don't worry mom," he said gently, "You don't _ever_ have to worry about me trying to take over the town, I kick the other ghosts out for a reason."

Maddie nodded, and then, on impulse hugged her son. He stiffened for a split second and then relaxed, returning the hug. "I can't begin to imagine what you've been through these past three years. What horrible parents you must think we are!" she said, feeling her heart sink as she remembered all the incidents where she might have destroyed her own son.

"I never hated you guys," Danny said, "And I don't think you're horrible."

"But all the threats! Every time we said we'd rip you apart if we caught you! No wonder you never said anything to us," Maddie replied as she finally released her son.

"To be honest, that's one reason I never told you. You were just too gung ho about everything and I didn't want to get shot," Danny offered. "Though to be honest, I'm kinda glad you figured it out. It sure made things easier for me at least," he said.

Maddie smiled and finished collecting the rest of her notes, "So does anyone else know?" She could not help but ask.

"Sam, Tuck, Jazz, some of the ghosts," Danny said after a moment.

"Jazz?" Maddie asked, surprised.

"Yeah, she figured it out a couple of years ago, she's been running interference with you guys," Danny answered with a sheepish smile.

Maddie could only shake her head at her children, "Figures. Well, you two can both come to me now with anything, alright?" she said.

"Alright," Danny said, his mood improving.

Finally getting up from her seat on Danny's bed, Maddie said, "The three of us can work on your father, he should be home late tonight but if you want to wait a few days we can."

"Thanks mom," Danny said with a small smile, "I'd rather wait and talk to Jazz and you before saying anything to dad." Maddie nodded, gave her son another hug and headed for the door, just as she reached it Danny said, "Mom?" Maddie turned to look at Danny, "Don't go into the Ghost Zone without me anymore okay? It's way to dangerous."

Maddie looked a little put out, having her research curtailed, but at this point she figured Danny knew what he was talking about and after a moment nodded and said, "Alright," and then she was gone.

With a sigh Danny flopped back on his back and floated over to his bed before letting gravity take over and he hit the mattress with a thump, "Well," he said to himself, "This was _not_ the kinda day I had planned."


End file.
